Book of the Damned — Chapter 8-a

I accept that, when there are storms, the damnedest of excluded, excommunicated things--things that are leprous to the faithful--are brought down--from the Super-Sargasso Sea--or from what for convenience we call the Super-Sargasso Sea--which by no means has been taken into full acceptance yet.

That things are brought down by storms, just as, from the depths of the sea things are brought up by storms.

To be sure it is orthodoxy that storms have little, if any, effect below the waves of the ocean--but--of course--only to have an opinion is to be ignorant of, or to disregard a contradiction, or something else that modifies an opinion out of distinguishability.

_Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, 47-180: That, along the coast of New Zealand, in regions not subject to submarine volcanic action, deep-sea fishes are often brought up by storms.

Iron and stones that fall from the sky; and atmospheric disturbances: "There is absolutely no connection between the two phenomena."

(_Symons.

_) The orthodox belief is that objects moving at planetary velocity would, upon entering this earth's atmosphere, be virtually unaffected by hurricanes; might as well think of a bullet swerved by someone fanning himself.

The only trouble with the orthodox reasoning is the usual trouble--its phantom-dominant--its basing upon a myth--data we've had, and more we'll have, of things in the sky having no independent velocity.

There are so many storms and so many meteors and meteorites that it would be extraordinary if there were no concurrences.

Nevertheless so many of these concurrences are listed by Prof. Baden-Powell (_Rept.

Brit.

Assoc.

_, 1850-54) that one--notices.

See _Rept.

Brit.

Assoc.

_, 1860--other instances.

The famous fall of stones at Siena, Italy, 1794--"in a violent storm."

See _Greg's Catalogues_--many instances.

One that stands out is--"bright ball of fire and light in a hurricane in England, Sept.

2, 1786." The remarkable datum here is that this phenomenon was visible forty minutes.

That's about 800 times the duration that the orthodox give to meteors and meteorites.

See the _Annual Register_--many instances.

In _Nature_, Oct.

25, 1877, and the London _Times_, Oct.

15, 1877, something that fell in a gale of Oct.

14, 1877, is described as a "huge ball of green fire."

This phenomenon is described by another correspondent, in _Nature_, 17-10, and an account of it by another correspondent was forwarded to _Nature_ by W. F.

Denning.

There are so many instances that some of us will revolt against the insistence of the faithful that it is only coincidence, and accept that there is connection of the kind called causal.

If it is too difficult to think of stones and metallic masses swerved from their courses by storms, if they move at high velocity, we think of low velocity, or of things having no velocity at all, hovering a few miles above this earth, dislodged by storms, and falling luminously.

But the resistance is so great here, and "coincidence" so insisted upon that we'd better have some more instances: Aerolite in a storm at St. Leonards-on-sea, England, Sept.

17, 1885--no trace of it found (_Annual Register_, 1885); meteorite in a gale, March 1, 1886, described in the _Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886;

meteorite in a thunderstorm, off coast of Greece, Nov.

19, 1899 (_Nature_, 61-111); fall of a meteorite in a storm, July 7, 1883, near Lachine, Quebec (_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1883); same phenomenon noted in _Nature_, 28-319; meteorite in a whirlwind, Sweden, Sept.

24, 1883 (_Nature_, 29-15).

_London Roy.

Soc.

Proc.

_, 6-276: A triangular cloud that appeared in a storm, Dec.

17, 1852; a red nucleus, about half the apparent diameter of the moon, and a long tail;

visible 13 minutes; explosion of the nucleus.

Nevertheless, in _Science Gossip_, n. s. , 6-65, it is said that, though meteorites have fallen in storms, no connection is supposed to exist between the two phenomena, except by the ignorant peasantry.

But some of us peasants have gone through the _Report of the British Association_, 1852. Upon page 239, Dr. Buist, who had never heard of the Super-Sargasso Sea, says that, though it is difficult to trace connection between the phenomena, three aerolites had fallen in five months, in India, during thunderstorms, in 1851 (may have been 1852).

For accounts by witnesses, see page 229 of the _Report_.

Or--we are on our way to account for "thunderstones."

It seems to me that, very strikingly here, is borne out the general acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which there is nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive standard to judge by.

Peasants believed in meteorites.

Scientists excluded meteorites.

Peasants believe in "thunderstones."

Scientists exclude "thunderstones."

It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields, and that scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms.

We cannot take for a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are more familiar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists: a host of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against us.

I should say that our "existence" is like a bridge--except that that comparison is in static terms--but like the Brooklyn Bridge, upon which multitudes of bugs are seeking a fundamental--coming to a girder that seems firm and final--but the girder is built upon supports.

A support then seems final.

But it is built upon underlying structures.

Nothing final can be found in all the bridge, because the bridge itself is not a final thing in itself, but is a relationship between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

If our "existence" is a relationship between the Positive Absolute and the Negative Absolute, the quest for finality in it is hopeless: everything in it must be relative, if the "whole" is not a whole, but is, itself, a relation.

In the attitude of Acceptance, our pseudo-base is: Cells of an embryo are in the reptilian era of the embryo;

Some cells feel stimuli to take on new appearances.

If it be of the design of the whole that the next era be mammalian, those cells that turn mammalian will be sustained against resistance, by inertia, of all the rest, and will be relatively right, though not finally right, because they, too, in time will have to give way to characters of other eras of higher development.

If we are upon the verge of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown, it will avail thee not to call us base-born and frowsy peasants.

In our crude, bucolic way, we now offer an outrage upon common sense that we think will some day be an unquestioned commonplace: That manufactured objects of stone and iron have fallen from the sky: That they have been brought down from a state of suspension, in a region of inertness to this earth's attraction, by atmospheric disturbances.

The "thunderstone" is usually "a beautifully polished, wedge-shaped piece of greenstone," says a writer in the _Cornhill Magazine_, 50-517. It isn't: it's likely to be of almost any kind of stone, but we call attention to the skill with which some of them have been made.

Of course this writer says it's all superstition.

Otherwise he'd be one of us crude and simple sons of the soil.

Conventional damnation is that stone implements, already on the ground--"on the ground in the first place"--are found near where lightning was seen to strike: that are supposed by astonished rustics, or by intelligence of a low order, to have fallen in or with lightning.

Throughout this book, we class a great deal of science with bad fiction.

When is fiction bad, cheap, low?

If coincidence is overworked.

That's one way of deciding.

But with single writers coincidence seldom is overworked: we find the excess in the subject at large.

Such a writer as the one of the _Cornhill Magazine_ tells us vaguely of beliefs of peasants: there is no massing of instance after instance after instance.

Here ours will be the method of mass-formation.

Conceivably lightning may strike the ground near where there was a wedge-shaped object in the first place: again and again and again: lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in China; lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in Scotland; lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in Central Africa: coincidence in France; coincidence in Java; coincidence in South America-- We grant a great deal but note a tendency to restlessness.

Nevertheless this is the psycho-tropism of science to all "thunderstones" said to have fallen luminously.

As to greenstone, it is in the island of Jamaica, where the notion is general that axes of a hard greenstone fall from the sky--"during the rains."

(_Jour.

Inst.

Jamaica_, 2-4. ) Some other time we shall inquire into this localization of objects of a specific material.

"They are of a stone nowhere else to be found in Jamaica."

(_Notes and Queries_, 2-8-24. ) In my own tendency to exclude, or in the attitude of one peasant or savage who thinks he is not to be classed with other peasants or savages, I am not very much impressed with what natives think.

It would be hard to tell why.

If the word of a Lord Kelvin carries no more weight, upon scientific subjects, than the word of a Sitting Bull, unless it be in agreement with conventional opinion--I think it must be because savages have bad table manners.

However, my snobbishness, in this respect, loosens up somewhat before very widespread belief by savages and peasants.

And the notion of "thunderstones" is as wide as geography itself.

The natives of Burma, China, Japan, according to Blinkenberg (_Thunder Weapons_, p. 100)--not, of course, that Blinkenberg accepts one word of it--think that carved stone objects have fallen from the sky, because they think they have seen such objects fall from the sky.

Such objects are called "thunderbolts" in these countries.

They are called "thunderstones" in Moravia, Holland, Belgium, France, Cambodia, Sumatra, and Siberia.

They're called "storm stones" in Lausitz; "sky arrows" in Slavonia; "thunder axes" in England and Scotland; "lightning stones" in Spain and Portugal; "sky axes" in Greece; "lightning flashes" in Brazil;

"thunder teeth" in Amboina.

The belief is as widespread as is belief in ghosts and witches, which only the superstitious deny today.

As to beliefs by North American Indians, Tyler gives a list of references (_Primitive Culture_, 2-237).

As to South American Indians--"Certain stone hatchets are said to have fallen from the heavens."

(_Jour.

Amer.

Folk Lore_, 17-203. ) If you, too, revolt against coincidence after coincidence after coincidence, but find our interpretation of "thunderstones" just a little too strong or rich for digestion, we recommend the explanation of one, Tallius, written in 1649: "The naturalists say they are generated in the sky by fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humor."

Of course the paper in the _Cornhill Magazine_ was written with no intention of trying really to investigate this subject, but to deride the notion that worked-stone objects have ever fallen from the sky.

A

writer in the _Amer.

Jour.

Sci.

_, 1-21-325, read this paper and thinks it remarkable "that any man of ordinary reasoning powers should write a paper to prove that thunderbolts do not exist."

I confess that we're a little flattered by that.

Over and over: "It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent reader that thunderstones are a myth."

We contend that there is a misuse of a word here: we admit that only we are intelligent upon this subject, if by intelligence is meant the inquiry of inequilibrium, and that all other intellection is only mechanical reflex--of course that intelligence, too, is mechanical, but less orderly and confined: less obviously mechanical--that as an acceptance of ours becomes firmer and firmer-established, we pass from the state of intelligence to reflexes in ruts.

An odd thing is that intelligence is usually supposed to be creditable.

It may be in the sense that it is mental activity trying to find out, but it is confession of ignorance.

The bees, the theologians, the dogmatic scientists are the intellectual aristocrats.

The rest of us are plebeians, not yet graduated to Nirvana, or to the instinctive and suave as differentiated from the intelligent and crude.

Blinkenberg gives many instances of the superstition of "thunderstones" which flourishes only where mentality is in a lamentable state--or universally.

In Malacca, Sumatra, and Java, natives say that stone axes have often been found under trees that have been struck by lightning.

Blinkenberg does not dispute this, but says it is coincidence: that the axes were of course upon the ground in the first place: that the natives jumped to the conclusion that these carved stones had fallen in or with lightning.

In Central Africa, it is said that often have wedge-shaped, highly polished objects of stone, described as "axes," been found sticking in trees that have been struck by lightning--or by what seemed to be lightning.

The natives, rather like the unscientific persons of Memphis, Tenn.

, when they saw snakes after a storm, jumped to the conclusion that the "axes" had not always been sticking in the trees.

Livingstone (_Last Journal_, pages 83, 89, 442, 448) says that he had never heard of stone implements used by natives of Africa.

A writer in the _Report of the Smithsonian Institution_, 1877-308, says that there are a few.

That they are said, by the natives, to have fallen in thunderstorms.

As to luminosity, it is my lamentable acceptance that bodies falling through this earth's atmosphere, if not warmed even, often fall with a brilliant light, looking like flashes of lightning.

This matter seems important: we'll take it up later, with data.

In Prussia, two stone axes were found in the trunks of trees, one under the bark.

(Blinkenberg, _Thunder Weapons_, p. 100. ) The finders jumped to the conclusion that the axes had fallen there.

Another stone ax--or wedge-shaped object of worked stone--said to have been found in a tree that had been struck by something that looked like lightning.

(_Thunder Weapons_, p. 71. ) The finder jumped to the conclusion.

Story told by Blinkenberg, of a woman, who lived near Kulsbjaergene, Sweden, who found a flint near an old willow--"near her house."

I

emphasize "near her house" because that means familiar ground.

The willow had been split by something.

She jumped.

Cow killed by lightning, or by what looked like lightning (Isle of Sark, near Guernsey).

The peasant who owned the cow dug up the ground at the spot and found a small greenstone "ax."

Blinkenberg says that he jumped to the conclusion that it was this object that had fallen luminously, killing the cow.

_Reliquary_, 1867-208: A flint ax found by a farmer, after a severe storm--described as a "fearful storm"--by a signal staff, which had been split by something.

I

should say that nearness to a signal staff may be considered familiar ground.

Whether he jumped, or arrived at the conclusion by a more leisurely process, the farmer thought that the flint object had fallen in the storm.

In this instance we have a lamentable scientist with us.

It's impossible to have positive difference between orthodoxy and heresy: somewhere there must be a merging into each other, or an overlapping.

Nevertheless, upon such a subject as this, it does seem a little shocking.

In most works upon meteorites, the peculiar, sulphurous odor of things that fall from the sky is mentioned.

Sir John Evans (_Stone Implements_, p. 57) says--with extraordinary reasoning powers, if he could never have thought such a thing with ordinary reasoning powers--that this flint object "proved to have been the bolt, by its peculiar smell when broken."

If it did so prove to be, that settles the whole subject.

If we prove that only one object of worked stone has fallen from the sky, all piling up of further reports is unnecessary.

However, we have already taken the stand that nothing settles anything; that the disputes of ancient Greece are no nearer solution now than they were several thousand years ago--all because, in a positive sense, there is nothing to prove or solve or settle.

Our object is to be more nearly real than our opponents.

Wideness is an aspect of the Universal.

We go on widely.

According to us the fat man is nearer godliness than is the thin man.

Eat, drink, and approximate to the Positive Absolute.

Beware of negativeness, by which we mean indigestion.

The vast majority of "thunderstones" are described as "axes," but Meunier (_La Nature_, 1892-2-381) tells of one that was in his possession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting "profoundment" (pear-shaped) with the angular outlines of ordinary meteorites.

The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a drop of molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me; but with less agreeableness I note its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum that turns the orthodox meteorologist pale with rage, or induces a slight elevation of his eyebrows, if you mention it to him.

Meunier tells of another "thunderstone" said to have fallen in North Africa.

Meunier, too, is a little lamentable here: he quotes a soldier of experience that such objects fall most frequently in the deserts of Africa.

Rather miscellaneous now: "Thunderstone" said to have fallen in London, April, 1876: weight about 8 pounds: no particulars as to shape (Timb's _Year Book_, 1877-246).

"Thunderstone" said to have fallen at Cardiff, Sept.

26, 1916 (London _Times_, Sept.

28, 1916).

According to _Nature_, 98-95, it was coincidence; only a lightning flash had been seen.

Stone that fell in a storm, near St. Albans, England: accepted by the Museum of St. Albans; said, at the British Museum, not to be of "true meteoritic material."

(_Nature_, 80-34. ) London _Times_, April 26, 1876: That, April 20, 1876, near Wolverhampton, fell a mass of meteoritic iron during a heavy fall of rain.

An account of this phenomenon in _Nature_, 14-272, by H. S.

Maskelyne, who accepts it as authentic.

Also, see _Nature_, 13-531. For three other instances, see the _Scientific American_, 47-194; 52-83;

68-325. As to wedge-shape larger than could very well be called an "ax": _Nature_, 30-300: That, May 27, 1884, at Tysnas, Norway, a meteorite had fallen: that the turf was torn up at the spot where the object had been supposed to have fallen; that two days later "a very peculiar stone" was found near by.

The description is--"in shape and size very like the fourth part of a large Stilton cheese."

It is our acceptance that many objects and different substances have been brought down by atmospheric disturbance from what--only as a matter of convenience now, and until we have more data--we call the Super-Sargasso Sea; however, our chief interest is in objects that have been shaped by means similar to human handicraft.

Description of the "thunderstones" of Burma (_Proc.

Asiatic Soc.

of Bengal_, 1869-183): said to be of a kind of stone unlike any other found in Burma; called "thunderbolts" by the natives.

I think there's a good deal of meaning in such expressions as "unlike any other found in Burma"--but that if they had said anything more definite, there would have been unpleasant consequences to writers in the 19th century.

More about the "thunderstones" of Burma, in the _Proc.

Soc.

Antiq.

of London_, 2-3-97. One of them, described as an "adze," was exhibited by Captain Duff, who wrote that there was no stone like it in its neighborhood.

Of course it may not be very convincing to say that because a stone is unlike neighboring stones it had foreign origin--also we fear it is a kind of plagiarism: we got it from the geologists, who demonstrate by this reasoning the foreign origin of erratics.

We fear we're a little gross and scientific at times.

But it's my acceptance that a great deal of scientific literature must be read between the lines.

It's not everyone who has the lamentableness of a Sir John Evans.

Just as a great deal of Voltaire's meaning was inter-linear, we suspect that a Captain Duff merely hints rather than to risk having a Prof. Lawrence Smith fly at him and call him "a half-insane man."

Whatever Captain Duff's meaning may have been, and whether he smiled like a Voltaire when he wrote it, Captain Duff writes of "the extremely soft nature of the stone, rendering it equally useless as an offensive or defensive weapon."

Story, by a correspondent, in _Nature_, 34-53, of a Malay, of "considerable social standing"--and one thing about our data is that, damned though they be, they do so often bring us into awful good company--who knew of a tree that had been struck, about a month before, by something in a thunderstorm.

He searched among the roots of this tree and found a "thunderstone."

Not said whether he jumped or leaped to the conclusion that it had fallen: process likely to be more leisurely in tropical countries.

Also I'm afraid his way of reasoning was not very original: just so were fragments of the Bath-furnace meteorite, accepted by orthodoxy, discovered.

We shall now have an unusual experience.

We shall read of some reports of extraordinary circumstances that were investigated by a man of science--not of course that they were really investigated by him, but that his phenomena occupied a position approximating higher to real investigation than to utter neglect.

Over and over we read of extraordinary occurrences--no discussion; not even a comment afterward findable; mere mention occasionally--burial and damnation.

The extraordinary and how quickly it is hidden away.

Burial and damnation, or the obscurity of the conspicuous.

We did read of a man who, in the matter of snails, did travel some distance to assure himself of something that he had suspected in advance; and we remember Prof. Hitchcock, who had only to smite Amherst with the wand of his botanical knowledge, and lo!

two fungi sprang up before night; and we did read of Dr. Gray and his thousands of fishes from one pailful of water--but these instances stand out; more frequently there was no "investigation."

We now have a good many reported occurrences that were "investigated."

Of things said to have fallen from the sky, we make, in the usual scientific way, two divisions: miscellaneous objects and substances, and symmetric objects attributable to beings like human beings, sub-dividing into--wedges, spheres, and disks.

_Jour.

Roy.

Met.

Soc.

_, 14-207: That, July 2, 1866, a correspondent to a London newspaper wrote that something had fallen from the sky, during a thunderstorm of June 30, 1866, at Netting Hill.

Mr. G.

T.

Symons, of _Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, investigated, about as fairly, and with about as unprejudiced a mind, as anything ever has been investigated.

He says that the object was nothing but a lump of coal: that next door to the home of the correspondent coal had been unloaded the day before.

With the uncanny wisdom of the stranger upon unfamiliar ground that we have noted before, Mr. Symons saw that the coal reported to have fallen from the sky, and the coal unloaded more prosaically the day before, were identical.

Persons in the neighborhood, unable to make this simple identification, had bought from the correspondent pieces of the object reported to have fallen from the sky.

As to credulity, I know of no limits for it--but when it comes to paying out money for credulity--oh, no standards to judge by, of course--just the same-- The trouble with efficiency is that it will merge away into excess.

With what seems to me to be super-abundance of convincingness, Mr. Symons then lugs another character into his little comedy: That it was all a hoax by a chemist's pupil, who had filled a capsule with an explosive, and "during the storm had thrown the burning mass into the gutter, so making an artificial thunderbolt."

Or even Shakespeare, with all his inartistry, did not lug in King Lear to make Hamlet complete.

Whether I'm lugging in something that has no special meaning, myself, or not, I find that this storm of June 30, 1866, was peculiar.

It is described in the London _Times_, July 2, 1866: that "during the storm, the sky in many places remained partially clear while hail and rain were falling."

That may have more meaning when we take up the possible extra-mundane origin of some hailstones, especially if they fall from a cloudless sky.

Mere suggestion, not worth much, that there may have been falls of extra-mundane substances, in London, June 30, 1866. Clinkers, said to have fallen, during a storm, at Kilburn, July 5, 1877: According to the _Kilburn Times_, July 7, 1877, quoted by Mr. Symons, a street had been "literally strewn," during the storm, with a mass of clinkers, estimated at about two bushels: sizes from that of a walnut to that of a man's hand--"pieces of the clinkers can be seen at the _Kilburn Times_ office."

If these clinkers, or cinders, were refuse from one of the super-mercantile constructions from which coke and coal and ashes occasionally fall to this earth, or, rather, to the Super-Sargasso Sea, from which dislodgment by tempests occurs, it is intermediatistic to accept that they must merge away somewhere with local phenomena of the scene of precipitation.

If a red-hot stove should drop from a cloud into Broadway, someone would find that at about the time of the occurrence, a moving van had passed, and that the moving men had tired of the stove, or something--that it had not been really red-hot, but had been rouged instead of blacked, by some absent-minded housekeeper.

Compared with some of the scientific explanations that we have encountered, there's considerable restraint, I think, in that one.

Mr. Symons learned that in the same street--he emphasizes that it was a short street--there was a fire-engine station.

I had such an impression of him hustling and bustling around at Notting Hill, searching cellars until he found one with newly arrived coal in it; ringing door bells, exciting a whole neighborhood, calling up to second-story windows, stopping people in the streets, hotter and hotter on the trail of a wretched imposter of a chemist's pupil.

After his efficiency at Notting Hill, we'd expect to hear that he went to the station, and--something like this: "It is said that clinkers fell, in your street, at about ten minutes past four o'clock, afternoon of July fifth.

Will you look over your records and tell me where your engine was at about ten minutes past four, July fifth?"

Mr. Symons says: "I think that most probably they had been raked out of the steam fire-engine."

June 20, 1880, it was reported that a "thunderstone" had struck the house at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea, falling down the chimney, into the kitchen grate.

Mr. Symons investigated.

He describes the "thunderstone" as an "agglomeration of brick, soot, unburned coal, and cinder."

He says that, in his opinion, lightning had flashed down the chimney, and had fused some of the brick of it.

He does think it remarkable that the lightning did not then scatter the contents of the grate, which were disturbed only as if a heavy body had fallen.

If we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out is too rigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and subject to expansions, the only unreasonableness we find in what he says--as judged by our more modern outlook, is: "I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are manufactured in the atmosphere."

Sounds a little unreasonable to us, because it is so of the positivistic spirit of former times, when it was not so obvious that the highest incredibility and laughability must merge away with the "proper"--as the _Sci.

Am.

Sup.

_ would say.

The preposterous is always interpretable in terms of the "proper," with which it must be continuous--or--clay-like masses such as have fallen from the sky--tremendous heat generated by their velocity--they bake--bricks.